


but the sea was too loud

by nonbinaryxion



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Angst, Aquaphobia, Gen, Mentions of canon character death, Moral Ambiguity, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Set after the first game, Survivor Guilt, gratuitous water metaphors, implied suicidal thoughts, uhh this is a little darker than the summary implies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-03
Updated: 2017-09-03
Packaged: 2018-12-21 23:20:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11954814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonbinaryxion/pseuds/nonbinaryxion
Summary: There were many, many, many things which—off the top of her head—Ellie would prefer to be doing right now. Reading that comic she'd found the other day, wedged between the cushions of an old sofa. Brushing the horses with Maria. Chilling by the treeline with Carla, Joanna's kid, the girl with the sparkly laugh and starry freckles. Shit, she'd preferguard dutyto this, and it was boring as hell unless Carla was there as her patrol partner.But summer in Wyoming had swung around, and with the return of warmth Joel had insisted Ellie should learn how to swim.





	but the sea was too loud

There were many, many, many things which—off the top of her head—Ellie would prefer to be doing right now. Reading that comic she'd found the other day, wedged between the cushions of an old sofa. Brushing the horses with Maria. Chilling by the treeline with Carla, Joanna's kid, the girl with the sparkly laugh and starry freckles. Shit, she'd prefer _guard duty_ to this, and it was boring as hell unless Carla was there as her patrol partner. 

But summer in Wyoming had swung around, and with the return of warmth Joel had insisted Ellie should learn how to swim. 

In lieu of swimsuits, Ellie had opted for the lightest clothes she could scavenge—knee-length cotton shorts, button-up plaid—while steadfast Joel donned the same faded jeans he wore every day, as if their waterlogged weight were nothing. He'd already waded far into the lake, sunk only to his hips, hands outstretched and features settled into an expression of patience which only a year ago Ellie might not have thought possible on his face. 

"See, it ain't so deep. C'mon in." 

Her fingers dug into the grass and dirt at the bank. She eyed the water barely lapping Joel's torso, wary. Her scabbed shins were already dangling in the lake, swinging a little, barely rippling the surface. It was cool, though not uncomfortably; in fact, the sensation could have been pleasant against the heady midday sun. 

But this was as deep as she was willing to go. 

Joel exhaled. It was almost a sigh. "Ellie." 

"Do I _have_ to?" 

"We talked about this." 

"I-I know, it's just…" 

"You know what happened last time. If it happens again and you still can't—" 

"I _know_." 

She inhaled deeply, fixing an intent stare on the water hugging her ankles. It was incredibly calm. Shallow. It would only come to her elbows at the deepest. She'd waded through deeper during the trek from Boston to Salt Lake City. 

Salt Lake, where she'd almost drowned. 

Ellie shuddered, eyes squeezing. Her stomach writhed. She drew back her legs, hugging her knees. "I'm—I'm _sorry_ , Joel, I just...I can't." 

She couldn't quite suppress the shame in her tone. Of _course_ swimming lessons made sense—she wasn't stupid. But this was _more_ than her old apprehension, the miniscule tremor in her voice as she'd confessed to Joel and Tess that she was useless in the water; that had been easily remedied by shallow depths and wooden pallets. Water was an obstacle, but not a fear, _never_ a fear. Now anxiety coiled around her ribs and throat like vines. Choked her like spores. 

Joel said nothing. Briefly, Ellie thought (hoped?) that he might have given up until she felt the water move against her as Joel approached, and opened her eyes to catch him hovering a metre or so away, that _look_ in his beetle-dark eyes telling her that he was considering, _very carefully_ , the most delicate approach to the situation. Which was almost funny, considering Joel rarely found it. 

"I know it ain't easy, but it's gotta be done. You can't be too careful." He paused. "I won't always be around to ferry you, kiddo. This could save your life someday." 

_It could have saved my life before,_ she thought. 

"Think of it like guitar lessons," he added. 

She fixed him with exasperated eyes. It was probably the densest thing he'd said all day. "This is a little different than playing _guitar_ , Joel." 

He held out a hand again—calloused and toughened. "I won't let you drown, kiddo," he said gently, holding eye contact. Ellie wondered if this was the tone he'd once used for Sarah. "I swear. You just...you gotta _trust_ me." 

Ah. Yeah. That. 

Something stoppered Ellie's throat, arms tightening around her shins; the words caught her like a right hook, tugging at the doubts which had been sitting like a stone in the pit of her stomach for weeks now. Insensitive as Joel could be, the flicker of his eyes told her that he saw that doubt in her face and realised his misstep. His own closed down before she could clearly pin down the shift in his expression: was it sadness? Guilt? A small, petty part of Ellie hoped for guilt. 

It wasn't that Ellie didn't believe he'd keep her from drowning. She trusted him with her life, he'd proven himself worthy of that time and time again. She _thought_ she did, at least. 

She just wasn't sure if that was important enough anymore. 

"Let's head back." Joel's sigh was heavier now, coloured with defeat. "We'll try again some other day." 

But something about his tone struck a chord of shame. Ellie worried her lip with her teeth. God, she should be able to _do_ this. It was _water_ , for fuck's sake. And maybe— 

Maybe she should give Joel another chance. 

"No. No, I can do it." Not allowing herself time to think, Ellie _pushed_ —exhaling a muted, trembling gasp as her bare feet hit the bottom, water swallowing her legs. Arms raised away from the surface. Heart floating to her throat. She was _in the lake_. Her breath caught; her head spun, unprepared for the abrupt surge of panic, Was the water colder than before? Was it moving? It felt stormier, suddenly. Shifting and pulling her ankles— 

"You're okay. Hey, you're okay, baby girl, you're okay. _Breathe_." 

—and there were broad hands on her shoulders and she realised her eyes were closed of their own accord, and she opened them and focused on Joel's chin and for just a second tried to forget who it belonged to because it was the only steady thing in the whole goddamn world. Ellie fumbled to grip the hands on her shoulder with shaking fingers and didn't look away from the man as he mouthed _fifty, forty-nine, forty-eight, forty-seven_ and she forced herself to count down with him until the thrumming in her chest subsided and her stomach was no longer trying to buck out of her mouth, and the water around her was just that—water. Not hungry. Not tugging. Still. 

"You okay?" Joel said. There was the faintest hint of surprise in his voice; maybe he'd thought her apprehension were nothing worse than performance anxiety. _I wish._

Ellie swallowed thickly. "Y-yeah." 

"Think you can go a little deeper?" 

Her pulse tripped, but she forced herself to say, "I think so." 

Joel nodded, taking her at her word. He unclasped her shoulders and stepped back to give her space. But without him to anchor her, her legs were vapor again. _Okay,_ she thought to herself. _Guitar lessons. Guitar lessons._ But she felt dizzy. She stepped forward and stirred a small cloud of dirt in the water, then another and one more, and the water hit her waist. Joel stood directly in front of her with arms ready to catch her at the slightest swoon, but she didn't need it. She _didn't_. She _wouldn't_. Another few steps and the water was trapping her chest. There was a pulse in her ears and a weird pain in her ribs. Something was creaking, like metal caving to a river flow, or maybe it was only in her head. Or maybe it was her lungs, which were starting to burn at the memory of drowning. Oh shit. Oh, shit. She was gonna drown. 

"Oh shit," she said, barely audible, because she couldn't pull in enough air to speak. "Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit." 

"Ellie—?" 

Joel reached for her again. _He won't let me drown._ Didn't she trust _him_ with her life? Didn't she say as much? But looking at him now through a heady haze of panic with the water in her throat, it suddenly felt like a lie. 

Another lie. 

Ellie tore backwards, stumbling, scattering water, almost falling in with her frantic efforts to avoid submersion—she found the bank again and scrabbled up onto the relative safety of dry land. She braced herself against the nearest tree with one arm and wrapped the other around her sodden torso as she waited for the ground beneath her to settle and the rushing in her head to _stop_ and her body to remember how to process oxygen again. 

A hand brushed her back. She cringed away automatically. Joel backed off. 

She wasn't sure how long she stood there, riding out the looming swells of a panic attack, but eventually they subsided enough for Ellie to turn around and look back to the lake. It was perfectly calm. 

Traitorous tears of frustration burned her eyes. 

"This is _bullshit_ ," Ellie snapped, more at herself than Joel. There was still a tremor in her limbs. She'd been bitten by walkers and inhaled spore clouds and survived, she'd killed clickers and bloaters and bandits alike, she'd taken the brunt of the bitterest winter with nothing but her wits and a bow while her only companion lay feverish and injured and insensible—but it was a few feet of water that defeated her. That sent her cowering like a stupid _kid_. 

Joel was standing off to the side, arms laced together. "Now, c'mon, Ellie, don't—" 

"Shut _up_ , Joel!" Was she being unfair? Probably. But in the moment she wasn't in the mood for _fair_. 

"Let's go back to Tommy's. We'll give it a few days, maybe, then try again—" 

"No we _can't!_ " she hissed. " _I_ can't! I can't _do_ this!" 

"Maybe it don't feel like you can right now, but you're strong, Ellie. I _know_ you can learn to handle this." 

Her hands became fists. "The hell do _you_ know about what I can handle?" 

Joel, unfazed: "Better'n anyone." 

"The _truth_ , Joel? You think I can handle that?" 

It wasn't what she'd planned to say, not at all, but she was sick and shaky and angry and the words punched out of her before she could reel them in. 

Joel flinched as if he'd been shot. No, not shot, worse than that—he flinched as if accused of an unforgivable crime. But something in his eyes _flashed_ , settled and hardened, his words coming low and deadened and just a little tired. "You got something you wanna say to me, Ellie?" 

Ellie swallowed again, suddenly afraid to push further—maybe she didn't _want_ to know, not really—but she couldn't retract the words now. She steeled herself. "Do _you_?" 

His mouth flapped wordlessly; he blinked, cast his dark eyes about the lake as if the nigh-deserted area could offer him an easy response. Whatever Ellie has expected, Joel had anticipated even less. Maybe he'd assumed Ellie wouldn't push the issue. Maybe he'd managed to fool _himself_ that Ellie had believed him, that they could live comfortably with the lie in the ashes of the world. "We really gotta do this here?" 

"As opposed to _where_?" 

Joel sighed again. His thumb brushed the shattered face of his watch before he caught himself. Ellie waited while he grappled with his thoughts, twitchier by the second and patience thinning. 

"You want me to _trust_ you, Joel?" Her voice was too unsteady to hold any real power, but the words were enough. "Tell me the fucking truth." 

The silence seemed to stretch forever—through an entire summer, backwards, through fall and spring and winter and before. It whistled like wind across a field of bones, human and walker alike. A silence so loud, she started to think she _couldn't_ hear Joel even if he spoke. 

She was about to close her eyes and say _fuck, forget it_ when Joel opened his mouth. 

"Everything I did was to protect _you_. You know that, right?" 

Oh, God. 

Her heart sank. "You mean you…" 

Joel held her gaze. Exhausted. 

It was the answer Ellie had been bracing for, but it still landed like a sucker punch. The awful tight-chest waterlogged feeling came back. Her hands felt numb. "I'm the only one," she said, barely audible, "aren't I?" 

"Look, Ell—" 

" _Why_ , Joel?" 

He floundered. "I—she was gonna cut you up, kid." 

Ellie grabbed her wrist, shaking. Rubbing circles into the skin with her thumb to ground herself as the pieces fell. _I was supposed to die,_ she thought numbly. It was too heavy to process. Another voice, dark and cutting from the fringes of her mind, muttered: _Good._ It sounded hideously similar to Riley. 

The implication of _she_ hit like a bullet. "What did you do to Marlene?" 

He reached towards her. Ellie stepped back. 

They'd travelled together a long time. Joel didn't take prisoners. 

She was gonna be sick. 

"Get—get the fuck away from me." 

"Kid, please—" 

" _I'm not your kid, Joel!_ " 

Once upon a time, in another life, Joel had said pretty much the same thing. It cut Ellie like a knife—landing a bullseye hit on that tender part of her always, _always_ waiting for someone else to leave. 

They might have been in that abandoned ranch again. Only Ellie was firing the shots, and Joel was recoiling as if it were the _worst_ possible thing she could've said. 

"Just _listen_ , okay?" And, lightning-quick, Joel's hand took her wrist. Ellie hissed and pulled away, instinctively, but his grip was firm. Not painful, but ironlike. "What was I _supposed_ to do? Let them just..." Joel faltered, voice catching. He took a breath to collecting himself. "I had a job, Ellie. I _have_ a job. Protecting you, _that's_ my job now, you understand? Do you have any idea what your _life_ means? To _me_?" 

His voice was hard as steel, its intensity rooting Ellie to the ground. This wasn't Patient Joel, the man she'd come to know this past year—this was _Survivor_ Joel, _Smuggler_ Joel, _We-All-Make-Hard-Choices-In-This-Shitty-World_ Joel. Ellie's blood turned to ice as Joel set his jaw, eyes turning back to flint. It was clear. Cuttingly clear. 

He didn't regret a second of it. 

"Maybe you think you owe the world, kid, but you don't." Slowly, _slowly_ , he loosened his grip. "And neither do I. Not a _goddamn thing_." 

He probably didn't even stop to consider this broken fucking world when he raised the gun. 

Free from Joel's grasp, Ellie brought her arms to her chest. Took one step back, then two. She shook her head. Everything was cloudy. The water was up to her mouth now, weeping through her eyes. Marlene would've had her die. Joel made her live. She didn't know what to do with that. 

Only one thought was clear enough to break the surface. She lifted her head, met Joel's eyes unflinching. His outline blurred through the water. 

"What about what Marlene's meant to me?" she whispered. 

Ellie turned away before Joel could even try to answer. Scrubbing her tears furiously with the back of her hand, she forced her wavering legs to march her away from the lake and Joel's pleas and back to Tommy's place, to the final flickering sparks of the world before—a world condemned to dust and memorial. A world without Riley or Winston or her mom or Tess or Sam or Henry or _Marlene_ , where good things came screaming into life only to be smothered into cynical submission in their sleep. How could her life— _just one_ —possibly weigh against all that cost? 

She'd known the lie the moment Joel said it. But some kernel of hope had rested within her which dared to believe otherwise. Which _dared_ to hope Joel was a man of his word. 

What was worse: the lie, or that it was Joel's lie? 

(In Ellie's dust, Joel stared helplessly from his place on the shore. His stomach rolled; his clothes dripped. And—as he focused on Ellie's shrinking form—he could almost, _almost_ feel something rising around his ankles.) 

**Author's Note:**

>  **title credit:** _ghost dance_ by emily berry
> 
> * * *
> 
> for the record: i really don't know who to agree with regarding, y'know, the moral dilemma at the end of tlou between joel and marlene. like....i kinda agree with them both??? but i wanted to explore the confrontation between joel and ellie and what i think her knee-jerk respose would be as a severely traumatised kid, so.......i hope i did an okay job
> 
> (p.s. i started writing this AGES ago out of hype after tlou2's announcement, and nothing's changed, i'm still SO EXCITED oh my god 2019 can't come quick enough)


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